Amusingly enough, my four best games over the last two days have all been as ADC.

Given your previous lecture on the topic, I call bullshit. They simply CAN'T succeed in the current state of the game. I've been told by the highest authority that it's so.

I blame BotRK.

Snark aside, I'm kind of curious. BotRK, a Hurricane, $cheap-attack-speed-item (maybe a Wit's End), boots, and some items to increase life expectancy.

That would be neat if you catch all the squishies together, maybe on Varus to synergize with the rest of his kit. I'd bet it underperforms compared to IE+PD in general though, which is I think the problem a lot of AD carries are having. BotRK rush just doesn't let you carry. It's only good on ADC when you're dueling a lot or have very high HP but low armor targets, and then it still needs additional items to be effective.

Amusingly enough, my four best games over the last two days have all been as ADC.

Given your previous lecture on the topic, I call bullshit. They simply CAN'T succeed in the current state of the game. I've been told by the highest authority that it's so.

I blame BotRK.

Snark aside, I'm kind of curious. BotRK, a Hurricane, $cheap-attack-speed-item (maybe a Wit's End), boots, and some items to increase life expectancy.

That would be neat if you catch all the squishies together, maybe on Varus to synergize with the rest of his kit. I'd bet it underperforms compared to IE+PD in general though, which is I think the problem a lot of AD carries are having. BotRK rush just doesn't let you carry. It's only good on ADC when you're dueling a lot or have very high HP but low armor targets, and then it still needs additional items to be effective.

Sure, but it's just the old "dead DPS = zero DPS" problem. Glass cannoning with IE/PD/BT is less viable than it was in Season 2 - you have to either be fed or extremely adept, preferably both. Since none of us here can rely on either of those, maybe it's time to consider building for the reality of the current season instead of bemoaning what we once had.

Amusingly enough, my four best games over the last two days have all been as ADC.

Given your previous lecture on the topic, I call bullshit. They simply CAN'T succeed in the current state of the game. I've been told by the highest authority that it's so.

I blame BotRK.

Snark aside, I'm kind of curious. BotRK, a Hurricane, $cheap-attack-speed-item (maybe a Wit's End), boots, and some items to increase life expectancy.

That would be neat if you catch all the squishies together, maybe on Varus to synergize with the rest of his kit. I'd bet it underperforms compared to IE+PD in general though, which is I think the problem a lot of AD carries are having. BotRK rush just doesn't let you carry. It's only good on ADC when you're dueling a lot or have very high HP but low armor targets, and then it still needs additional items to be effective.

Sure, but it's just the old "dead DPS = zero DPS" problem. Glass cannoning with IE/PD/BT is less viable than it was in Season 2 - you have to either be fed or extremely adept, preferably both. Since none of us here can rely on either of those, maybe it's time to consider building for the reality of the current season instead of bemoaning what we once had.

So it's pretty well known that different champions/classes of champions vary in power level as player skill varies. It seems like ADC effectiveness just drops off as player skill becomes competent across the board because most bruisers are loaded up with easy-buttons where the ADC is powered much more heavily by players' micro. I don't think building the ADC tanky is the solution because it tends to reduce your time to kill faster than your time to live increases. You still have to out-play the bruiser that's diving you either way, and having to do it for the shortest amount of time possible seems to be the better option since there are fewer plays to screw up.

That would be neat if you catch all the squishies together, maybe on Varus to synergize with the rest of his kit. I'd bet it underperforms compared to IE+PD in general though, which is I think the problem a lot of AD carries are having. BotRK rush just doesn't let you carry. It's only good on ADC when you're dueling a lot or have very high HP but low armor targets, and then it still needs additional items to be effective.

Sure, but it's just the old "dead DPS = zero DPS" problem. Glass cannoning with IE/PD/BT is less viable than it was in Season 2 - you have to either be fed or extremely adept, preferably both. Since none of us here can rely on either of those, maybe it's time to consider building for the reality of the current season instead of bemoaning what we once had.

So it's pretty well known that different champions/classes of champions vary in power level as player skill varies. It seems like ADC effectiveness just drops off as player skill becomes competent across the board because most bruisers are loaded up with easy-buttons where the ADC is powered much more heavily by players' micro. I don't think building the ADC tanky is the solution because it tends to reduce your time to kill faster than your time to live increases. You still have to out-play the bruiser that's diving you either way, and having to do it for the shortest amount of time possible seems to be the better option since there are fewer plays to screw up.

Right, but I'm operating under the assumption that you will die. Facerolling a glass cannon when the other team makes mistakes, or when your team makes clutch plays, is relatively easy. Being effective in a typical-or-worse game where the enemy bruiser and tank dive after your scrawny ass is the problem.

When you need to stay alive, you need a few things - CC is one, speed and maneuver are important, the ability to take some punishment is another. You need some of each. We're conditioned from S1 and S2 that the latter isn't worth it, but again - dead DPS = zero DPS. Realistically, as ADC now, you're not primary damage, you're support damage. Your bruiser is the threat. Their bruiser is the threat. The longer you can keep their bruiser occupied and the more damage you can inflict on them before your untimely demise, the better. What with large HP pools, you're still going to do acceptable damage to the targets you're mostly concerned with and be able to have more itemization options available to keep them from ripping you apart like a toy.

I see what you're saying, and you're right about our assumptions differing. I play to not get hit when I ADC, which can get me out of position in fights depending on how much my team is covering me. Being semi-durable and chopping off some health from the enemy AP and ADC before dying is certainly a viable counter to the other team being able to throw whomever they want into a meatgrinder instead. If it's someone built to counter you can definitely end up out of the fight for longer than the enemy needs to gain the advantage.

Amusingly enough, my four best games over the last two days have all been as ADC.

Given your previous lecture on the topic, I call bullshit. They simply CAN'T succeed in the current state of the game. I've been told by the highest authority that it's so.

While I know, or at least assume, that this is said tongue in cheek, it speaks to a seemingly rampant communication issue that's floating around on Ars lately. I make an argument about overall class balance and everything I say is taken in complete absolutes and refuted with more of the same.

It seems like you can't even have a conversation here lately where people acknowledge the gray areas or the inherent variance present in every match.

Exactly. I think this is why carries like Caitlyn are more popular this season. She has range, she has CC, she has maneuver. MF is back in style. She's fairly easy to get out of trouble. Quinn's strong for her maneuver.

I just haven't seen many games this season where I've wanted to rely on the ADC doing the heavy lifting, even when I've Threshed So Hard and fed them multiple kills. Feels to me that the game's moving away from the concept of "carries" in general and more toward a balanced team structure.

Mucked around with AD and MR rune builds for AP mids, both were surprisingly effective. I heard on streams that alot of pro AP mids take AD runes for last hit and trade damage. It definitely does make a difference. It is especially effective on those champs you ~have to bully pre-6 like akali/kat/kassadin

I take double pen runes for Kassadin, then scaling AP yellows and blues.

Might help a little more if I take MR blues, but oh well, I seem to win most trades early (and late) even against another Kass mid.

Might help a little more if I take MR blues, but oh well, I seem to win most trades early (and late) even against another Kass mid.

My AD mid setup has me maxing MR right out of the gate. I start with like 48 on most champions and could grab a Null-Magic Mantle and a couple of potions on top of it. So relying entirely on magic damage is going to be painful for an opponent, 59% reduced damage is a lot to deal with.

Might help a little more if I take MR blues, but oh well, I seem to win most trades early (and late) even against another Kass mid.

My AD mid setup has me maxing MR right out of the gate. I start with like 48 on most champions and could grab a Null-Magic Mantle and a couple of potions on top of it. So relying entirely on magic damage is going to be painful for an opponent, 59% reduced damage is a lot to deal with.

Yeah, it would just depend on who you're up against, and if you can swap to a new rune page or not.

I've had luck with lots of different setups, and fails with lots as well.

We've been having trouble getting 5 of us together for ranked teams consistently for a few months now, due to work schedules. This week we decided to say fuck it and just do ranked 3s, after having not played more than 2-3 games of Treeline since it was changed.

Huzzah!

This should tide us over until the ARAM queue goes live. If we're really lucky, we'll get ranked ARAMs...and I'm not even joking.

I wonder if players will start negotiating contracts with their teams that give them more protection after seeing how quickly people can get replaced this season.

I doubt it. All of the LCS money goes to the team, not the players directly. And there has to be some way to protect against the kind of attitude that Chaox was showing. Show up late to practices and even matches, never apologize for it, tells Regi to just fire him when they get into an argument about it, never accepts any responsibility for the situation... yeah, he deserved to be cut. The decision to replace him with WildTurtle was unanimous. And if you're not on the team, you're not going to collect a paycheck.

It's kinda funny. A year or two ago and I would have said that Chaox was the most levelheaded guy on the team, someone who really had his shit together. Things certainly change.

I was afk for a couple weeks and missed this whole thing... Chaox is a phenominal ADC, he's on par with nearly anyone in the world, but it doesn't matter how good he is if he's a shitty teammate and not committed to the team. He's always been kind of a lone wolf. I feel similarly about Doublelift and given CLG's penchant for dumping really good players for virtually no reason I'm a little surprised he's still around.

Seems like WildTurtle has done pretty well for himself so far, and hopefully Chaox can change his attitude and get back on a good team. I've heard rumblings that he may be trying to move to a Chinese team (he's fluent in Mandarin) but if his commitment wasn't good enough for notably un-strict TSM, there's no way he's going to make it in China.

I've heard rumblings that [Chaox] may be trying to move to a Chinese team (he's fluent in Mandarin) but if his commitment wasn't good enough for notably un-strict TSM, there's no way he's going to make it in China.

He insisted on stream that he could handle the long hours and strict regimen of the Chinese teams but also said they weren't very well compensated. S'pose it depends what his goals are.

Holy crap. I ground out the rest of level 28 this weekend, and between yesterday and today I've been disgusted with the quality of players in this game. Nothing to do with skill, it's pure attitude. From people deliberately tooling and picking support and CSing, to ADC Sona, to elitist asses only going in for the KS and running off, to people not speaking any english. Yes, bad players too, but good grief the trolling and shitty attitude is what I can't deal with. Why would you take blue from a bruiser or the AP as support? Why would you ping to engage as the initiator then run off to push another lane.

I even spent a game listening to some Fiz on the other team talk trash the whole game and they were terrible and I shut them down -- calling me noob when I completely shut down his farm as lux in mid. Absolutely disgusting. I'm not sure what is worse, the people with the asstard attitude or the complete mutes that don't say a single thing during champion pick and the match itself. Someone even picked a support at the last second after we already had two lock in.

I don't care if I win or lose, I just like to mess around and have fun. But jesus ..

I really really really hate people who think supports shouldn't ever take some creeps. I find god knows how many matches where I'll last shot a creep that was impossible for the adc to get to. Apparently we should just throw away gold for the sake of not appearing to "take" from the carry.

If the support is just plugging away at minions sure, bitch and moan then, but I find in general nearly every complaint regardless of if I'm support or not from ADC about creep kills involve "zomg look at support they have 15 minions" while ignoring crap like the support just getting kill shots rather than tower while adc is at base, or unable to get them.

Holy crap. I ground out the rest of level 28 this weekend, and between yesterday and today I've been disgusted with the quality of players in this game. Nothing to do with skill, it's pure attitude. From people deliberately tooling and picking support and CSing, to ADC Sona, to elitist asses only going in for the KS and running off, to people not speaking any english. Yes, bad players too, but good grief the trolling and shitty attitude is what I can't deal with. Why would you take blue from a bruiser or the AP as support? Why would you ping to engage as the initiator then run off to push another lane.

I even spent a game listening to some Fiz on the other team talk trash the whole game and they were terrible and I shut them down -- calling me noob when I completely shut down his farm as lux in mid. Absolutely disgusting. I'm not sure what is worse, the people with the asstard attitude or the complete mutes that don't say a single thing during champion pick and the match itself. Someone even picked a support at the last second after we already had two lock in.

I don't care if I win or lose, I just like to mess around and have fun. But jesus ..

Well, I think you'd have to define support's CS'ing, as Kevin stated, sometimes it's deliberate when you can't get it, other times, it's to prevent a push (if there are enemy minions at your tower, and the enemy player is hitting the tower, the best thing to do it to kill the creeps, unless you know the enemy champ has something that will cause the tower to switch agro, i.e. aoe that will hit you).

Additionally, when I support as Nunu, I'll eat a cheap (caster) creep to get my health back up if we just had an engage by the enemy.

ADC Sona is.... yeah, I got nothing for that. Sona can reasonably go mid with the right runes/masteries, but ADC?

KS is Kill Secure in most cases. I can't tell you how many times as a support, I've tried to help my ADC chase down someone only to watch them get away. If the ADC is more than about 500 distance away, I'll do what I can to kill the enemy. Better to have a kill and an assist than no kill at all.

Also, some champs rely on getting the last hit to refresh their skills, Kat, Akali, Kaz, Yi. Others should stay back and try to pick up the kill, like ADCs. Others can do it by accident, I've seen plenty of Sona's get the last kill without trying due to her range and chord prioritization. Without more context of what you mean with just running in to KS and run away, I can't say if it was justified or not.

Speaking of Sona, that's one great example of a support that is really good with blue over most other champs in teams. Nunu is a good one as well depending on how he builds, more blood boil means more damage.

the rest of the stuff you bring up is pretty spot on with my final exception: Not everyone speaks English. Brazil plays on the American servers.

1) The ADC Sona insisted on being bot during lock in, and only said she was going ADC *AFTER* the match started. I had already locked in as Taric prior to her pick, so I ended up going AP top -- and did well. Just the fact though it was an ADC in a lane with an ... I think Ashe, was stupid.

2) The Sona I did lane with in another match, was constantly autoattacking creeps deliberately going for CS non-stop and even blowing mana on abilities to secure gold. I was on Ezreal and while I could compete and - we were pushing the lane far too hard and managing my mana so I could actually get a kill was a pain. And every time I engaged she would go the other way.

3) The support that insisted on having blue over me on Lux was a Nautilus. I took his blue once... ONCE.. and that was way after the laning phase was over.

4) In general though, the above mentioned tooling and trolling wasn't nearly as bad as the attitude. It was nonstop all weekend. I don't know if that had to do with the fact that it was a holiday and all the nicer people were with their families... but the difference was very stark. I've been playing this game on and off for years and this is just silly.

I'm aware how much the meta has evolved since season one -- and I'm aware of moss of the basics. Enough to know someone is just being an ass. :|

For those that haven't followed LCS this weekend (or ever), you have missed the best game of League yet. It was between CW and EG in the EU LCS. I strongly suggest you spend a few minutes watching this game (and intro for the hype) and enjoy.

Just to show how awesome this game was, both teams stood up after the game and met in the middle of the stage to talk about what they just took part in.PictureThat is not something you see every day.

ADC Sona is.... yeah, I got nothing for that. Sona can reasonably go mid with the right runes/masteries, but ADC?

I've played AD Sona many a time in ARAM, Dominion, and even SR. If you know how to play "real" ADCs, you can wreck face with Sona if the enemy has no idea it's coming. It works best with support Ashe in draft, for the bonus mind screw.

ADC Sona is.... yeah, I got nothing for that. Sona can reasonably go mid with the right runes/masteries, but ADC?

AD Sona is trolly, but it's better than AP Sona. Compared to a real ADC, Sona has average range, low base health and armor, slightly below average attack speed/scaling, and slightly above average movespeed. She has a decent poke with her Q and gets some free AD from its aura. AP Sona is Annie who can't control who her fireball hits, doesn't have a wave clear, and whose stun doesn't leave behind a bear.

I've seen people terrorize Dominion with AD Sona because the map's aura gives her basically unlimited mana, although I wouldn't consider it a build to play if you're being serious as it still has a lot of flaws.

Crossed Reality wrote:

It works best with support Ashe in draft, for the bonus mind screw.

Oh man I want to try this now. Ashe is kinda odd when you think about it: if someone described her kit - a 1200 range poke, the ability to permasnare a target, a short/med-range clairvoyance, and a global range stun but no damage steroid - would you think she was a carry or a support?

I've determined that I'm never going to get to build past Deathcap on my mid Nunu. Every game I've gotten there ends in a surrender

I'm not even sure what I'd do for a full build on him at this point. Probably Deathcap, Liandry's, Morello's, Deathfire, <something>. RoA seems great but I can't see not rushing Liandry's on him... it makes the already super annoying snowballs even worse and I'm of the opinion that if you aren't building RoA first you shouldn't build it because it's not going to have time to charge up.

So for the first time, I failed a promotion series. First game was 4 truly awful players, and myself on support so there was no way to recover it. No big deal, it happens. Just a bad mix of players.

Second game is the kind the kills me, though. Our top lane had technical trouble right out of the gate and doesn't join the game until her lane opponent is level 6. Then, mid lane rage quits about 20 minutes in after blaming everyone else for everything he did wrong, most of which was diving into fights that we weren't going to win because we were outfarmed and outleveled by that time.

Having 5 bad players on a team that don't make excuses or complain about each other being bad is okay. You just move on and play the next game. But having that 1 asshole who thinks he is great, then consistently makes bad decisions and tanks the game, while feeding his lane opponent just kills my desire to play the game for the night. Luckily I only dropped to 73 points, so 1 or 2 more wins will put me back in a promotion series.

Yeah, generally Void Staff is my go-to on most AP champions, even against a moderate amount of MR.

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build a bit of tank? (Spirit visage wouldn't be horrible - would make the Q that much more trolly and gives CDR)

Hrmmm... Spirit Visage. I like it. He needs the CDR because he's basically only spamming one thing, he gets some extra durability, and Consume on AP Nunu is already pretty much broken so making it even stupider would be great.

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He should be able to charge up a tear without much trouble - muramana would add extra dmg onto his auto's yes?, but this would likely need to be started earlier.

The early build thing is where I run into problems. It's like RoA, if I'm not building it very early I don't think it's worth it.

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Lich bane wouldn't be horrible in combat with champs but you wouldn't gain much vs towers.

You actually gain a ton against towers assuming you have a way to trigger it every three seconds. If an enemy creep wave is there it adds a ton.

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Abyssal septer would be good for ults and in general.

Yeah, might be worth it. I just hate the new massively nerfed range on it.

I'm a little disappointed that there wasn't anything Urf related this April Fool's Day. It is kinda cool that they at least did this CHEW thing, but because there was no tie-in back to the actual game it left me wanting something more.